Holi Moly

Bangalore, India (map) 

In this blog: getting covered in paint at the Holi festival

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Holi is an unquestionably Indian event, and I'm sure most people reading this will recognise the sight, if not the name after seeing the photos. Only in India would it make perfect sense to throw paint over each other as a form of celebration. Holi is the second biggest Indian festival (after Diwali), but unfortunately as I discovered it's traditionally a North Indian festival. Being in Bangalore in the south therefore made it a lot harder to experience it properly, but once we finally tracked down the action, it was a whole lot of fun.

Plastered

I spent the day hanging around with Nick - the Kenyan born, British bred, Spanish living, ultimate traveller, who I'd met at Honey Valley then been on a wee roadtrip with (see previous two blogs). We found getting any information on what was happening for Holi pretty difficult, with nothing obvious apart from adverts for a few cheesy parties for the more affluent locals. The local newspapers were full of contradicting advice about whether that festival had in fact happened the day before, or whether it was that day. Google said very little. When we asked knowledgable people they scratched their head. And when we asked locals on the streets, we were lead on a massive wild goose chase. Not the laid back celebrations we'd hope for.

The first rule of Holi is to not wear your Sunday best as everything is guaranteed to get ruined, so I donned an old stained t-shirt and a cheap pair of shorts, and Nick wore clothes he was about to bin anyway. We followed a few possible tip-offs and went for a wander round the streets of Bangalore, down a local side road, a park, the outside of a military base and a market, seeing small trails of paint on the pavement but no people. An hour or so passed with no luck. We got a rickshaw to another district, and finally came across a few multi-coloured folks wandering along, face down, looking decidedly peeved about their paint attacks. Further on a group of young lads were gathered outside a shop, and we asked them where people were celebrating. Would you know it, they responded by covering us in paint. The game was on.

Pink boys

We bought ourselves an eight-pack of paints from a market stall, which are actually powder rather than liquid, and continued on. With all the locals on the next two streets looking decidedly normal, we stuck out slightly more than usual - two white guys covered in shades of turquoise and pink. Small groups of revellers started becoming more noticeable, and we greeted each other with a 'happy holi' followed by throwing handfuls of paint in each other faces. As you do. We fashioned our sunglasses into a form of safety goggle, which seemed to work surprisingly well until some clever bod decided to up the ante and start throwing water, which inevitably lead to a mere bit of face paint turning into an ocean of colour. The good side to all this we learnt, was that for once the shop owners and rickshaw drivers had no interest in pushing their services to us - heaven. By now we started coming across groups of ten or twenty people celebrating on the streets, mostly young lads, and there was a real energy in the air and smiles on faces.

We kept asking where the main events were but no-one seemed to know of any, so we decided to head a mile or two south to an area briefly mentioned in the newspaper. Finally, at long last, we found something. We came across a university where many students lined the road, covered head to toe in every shade of colour known to man, really embracing the spirit of the festival. We stood watching, and sure enough a few people approached us and started talking, before inevitably paint flew everywhere, then was rubbed over faces and into hair. Some of them took it a stage further and ripped off each other's shirts, but I managed to just about hold them back on this one, thankfully.

The aftermath - Nick and I. Took ages to clean off!

Whilst Nick and I were a long way from our student days, we just about got away with hanging around with these oh so young folks for half an hour or so before finally relenting, deciding the huge public celebrations we were looking for probably weren't happening in Bangalore. The only trouble was, now we wanted a rickshaw, no-one wanted to pick us up surprisingly enough! Eventually one guy, obviously desperate for the money, took us on though and soon we were back at the hotel. After twenty minutes of soap and scrubbing in the shower, I managed to get most of it off my face but my back, chest, and hair remained multi-coloured. And so it remained for three or four days. Holi was absolutely brilliant fun, and will remain a fond memory of my time in India.